


So Much Closer

by apanoplyofsong



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Speculation, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 02:31:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11004126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apanoplyofsong/pseuds/apanoplyofsong
Summary: [Post-S4 finale, contains spoilers]There are three types of reunions for Bellamy and Clarke.





	So Much Closer

**Author's Note:**

> This three-pronged-reunion was something I mentioned in a conversation with [muchmorethanaprincess](http://archiveofourown.org/users/muchmorethanaprincess/pseuds/muchmorethanaprincess), so I wrote it. Also I have no idea how Madi/Maddie/Mady's name is spelled; I just picked a way and went with it.  
> (I know there's a lot of post-finale fic going up right now that I haven't read yet, so hopefully it's not to close to any of y'all who wrote much more quickly than me!)
> 
> Title from Transatlanticism.

The first time Clarke sees him again, she can’t breathe.

His hair is sheared short, his shoulders thinner, but the way he carries himself as he disembarks the Eligius ship is unmistakable, even with the shackles binding his wrists and ankles. He scowls at the man in a uniform who pushes him down the ramp, and that’s familiar, too.

Clarke is crouched close to the drop of the cliff face, rifle by her side, and all the air catches in her lungs when Bellamy turns her direction. The people around him are staring at the sky, the burned twigs and new foliage just beginning to sprout, squinting against the light of the sun, but he’s scanning the treeline methodically, eyes shifting closer and closer to her little patch of green. Her chest feels like a balloon filled to bursting, so tight it’s painful.

She crawls as far out on the ledge as she safely can, pulled by the same string tied tight around her heart, and watches the light glance off his cheekbones. A sharp bite to her lip just barely keeps her from crying out when he looks at the space she’s hunched among the brush and suddenly halts. He stands stock still for a moment, his eyes so wide that Clarke would swear she could see the whites even from this distance.

When was the last time she took a breath?

A woman with a baton comes up behind him and nudges his back. He stumbles forward, eyes yanked to the rocky path, and all the air rushes out of her in a whisper.

“Bellamy.”

It sounds too loud in the calm of the grove and she slinks back, letting a branch fall in front of her face. She can still see him crane his neck around as the line keeps walking, a chain of people filing out behind him, his eyes searching the spot where she stood.

Clarke lets herself watch for one heartbeat more then turns back towards the rover, weaving among the tree trunks. The path weaving amongst the tree trunks doesn't take much of her focus anymore and she's grateful for the familiarity now.

They have work to do.

 

* * *

 

She has Madi help her monitor the radios.

Clarke met her after three months of travelling deeper into the forest. Madi, living in tunnels under the ruins of her family’s village, stumbled out with a hewn stone knife and wild eyes when Clarke stopped to assess the damage. The girl wasn’t familiar with technology when she joined Clarke in the rover, but she’s young, and learned quickly. Cycling through the frequencies is now a familiar practice to them both.

It’s been two weeks without another glimpse of Clarke’s friends. Without another glimpse of Bellamy. But if he’s there, she knows, she _knows_ he would have done everything he could to keep everyone together, to keep everyone alive.

She spends an hour alternating between gathering greens and watching the colony that’s been built out of the ship. Guards watch the perimeter in shifts; monitored groups of prisoners march out to till or dig or carrying water filters. But they still seem certain they’re the only people on the surface. They’ll slip up.

She’s counting on them to slip up.

Madi’s footsteps sound behind her a moment before the girl calls her name.

“I think I've got something,” she says, bouncing on her toes.

The radio is humming when Clarke reaches it and gives a whine of feedback when she picks it up.

“This is Clarke Griffin kom Skaikru, can anyone hear me?”

There’s a crackle, a beat of quiet static, and then a voice breaks through the other side.

“Clarke?”

She slumps against the side of the rover. It's his voice. It's him.

“ _Bellamy_.”

“Clarke!”

She had spent so much of that first lonely year convincing herself that she could be alive for a reason other than just her mother’s scientific success. Meeting Madi had helped, but this moment, this dream, was the one she clung to.

“Are you okay? Is everyone with you? Raven and Monty and--”

“Everyone’s alive. Listen, I don’t have much time.”

It should probably be stressful, hearing in a rush how the Eligius camp locks down at night, stays controlled during the day, the weapons the guards carry at all times. Instead, it’s almost soothing to be planning with Bellamy again. To be so sure of what she’s working towards.

There’s a loud buzz from across the line just before it falls silent and she sits for a moment, back still pressed against the rover where she slid to the ground, staring at the radio in her hand.

“So, what do we do now?” Madi asks, and Clarke remembers the girl's been standing there the entire time. She pushes up from the grass and clips the radio back onto its dock.

“Now we figure out a plan.”

 

* * *

 

It’s easier to be get herself and Madi accepted into the settlement than Clarke expected. Once she identifies the group of non-prisoners--off duty guards, select family, and other critical staff--she digs through her clothes until she finds something passable as Ark-style, and introduces herself.

“A virus broke out in the bunker,” she lies, once she’s in front of the guard that holds some authority over their fate. “Our immune systems had no defense against Earth’s new strands. By the time we identified what is was, my mother--our doctor--only had the chance to make two doses of the vaccine.” Clarke nods towards Madi, tugged tight against her side. “She gave it to me and my sister. We’re the only ones left.”

The story is compelling, carefully crafted and rehearsed so that Madi’s face bears only a soft trace of sadness. The General’s eyes flicker over them, assessing. Clarke can’t afford for her to be uncertain. They have medical training, too, Clarke tells the woman. Rebuilding the world brings too many injuries to waste a resource like that, especially when none of the colonizing group have so much as used feverfew.

“After all,” Clarke adds, “even prisoners need to be healthy to be of use.”

The woman nods and assigns them a room.

It takes time and hushed conversations on her smuggled radio to plan an escape. Even then, it’s risky. Monty is the only one of her people she actually sees, when he comes into the infirmary with a slice across the scar tissue of his hand. Clarke is careful not to react, cutting her eyes toward the other medic in the room after Monty stares at her a moment too long.

When she asks if the bandage is too tight as she wraps, Monty covers her fingers for a second and says quietly, “Everything is okay.”

It’s meant as a reassurance, and seeing her friend, thin but relatively healthy, gives her relief, but there’s still a knot between her shoulders that she knows won’t unspool until she can see Bellamy. Until she can see for herself that everyone is okay.

The chance to free the seven of them imprisoned comes soon enough, though. They’ve planned a small window of time between Raven’s planted distraction and the guard shift changes, just enough for them to get out of sight and reach Clarke’s lone patch of green before daybreak. Harper and Emori work night shifts in the canteen, and the locks on everyone else’s quarters have been carefully reprogrammed to allow them out when the power cuts. Madi is already waiting in the shadows of the hallway, ready to slip past the improvised gates.

“It’s going to work,” Clarke tells herself, and loads one last roll of bandages into her bag. The generators should be blown within two minutes. “It’ll be fine.”

“Clarke.”

It’s just a whisper but it jars her, and she turns. His eyes are raw and open against the determination on his face and her feet start moving before her brain can even wonder how he got there. Then she’s in his arms, Bellamy real and solid and wrapping himself around her, and it doesn’t matter how he’s not in his cell because he’s _there_. His hands flex against her sides and they’re grasping each other so tight that her pulse echoes through her body until, for a moment, it’s all she can hear. Her toes lift off the floor and she grips one hand tight around his shoulder, lets the other bury into his curls just growing back.

“You’re alive,” he chants quietly, breath close against her ear. “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.”

Clarke presses her lips against the corner of his cheek, the best she can reach, and doesn’t bother trying to stop the tears when she turns her forehead to rest against him.

“Yeah,” she says, shaky, “I’m alive.” She takes a tiny step back and traces her hand across his face, across the freckles starting to return on his neck, down his arms, checking that he’s really there. “ _You’re_ alive. Fuck, I’m so glad you’re here.”

Bellamy laughs, a little choked. His eyes are wet, too. “I’m pretty damn glad you’re here, too.” He wraps an arm around her shoulder and pulls her close again, Clarke more than happy to press her face to his chest and clasp her hands across his back. She remembers a hug so much like this before they parted, but now she can feel his body heat beneath her cheek instead of the radiation suit, can hear his heart beating under her ear in time with her own.

 _Alive_ , they seems to say. _Alive. Safe. Alive_.

For the first time in over six years, every part of her believes it.

Across the complex, there’s a boom and the low lights of the room cut off.

They both move. Clarke double checks the latch of her bag and swings it over her shoulders, then meets Bellamy where he’s silhouetted by the door.

“Okay,” she grins, “let’s get out of here.” He grins back.

They step across the threshold together.

**Author's Note:**

> hang out, prompt, get emotional on [tumblr](http://apanoplyoffic.tumblr.com/)  
> (yes, I did effectively ignore the people in the bunker whoops, roll with me here)
> 
> also when one of our fic ideas inevitably becomes canon, I expect royalties to be paid do you read me official writers


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